YOU HAVE BEEN CURATED TO CURATE ABOUT CURATION:
THIS IS JUST A SNIPPET. SNIP IT.

You are already in this space. You have been self-selected, but not entirely independently elected, to take part in an improvisation of presentation methods, hierarchy creation, and all that follows the artistic process of curation. Let’s ask the question: What does it mean to curate? Are we asking the previously curated (artists) or the currently curated (artwork)? In either scenario, we are asking ourselves to decide our role in the experience—as artists and as administrators.

What does it mean to give your ten pets two bowls of food and ask them to ask the following:
Who determines which bowl belongs to whom?
Who gets to decide who gets to eat first?
Who has the loudest bark? Does it matter?
Who has been in this position before?
Who deserves it, and who gets two desserts?
What will this say about those who decide?

As part of the curatorial panel, we can look at the TEAM ONE process in one of two ways:
A) We are part of a piece that requires that we play the part of curators. Therefore, we will make decisions based on our role only as curators. The finished series of work is the goal. We must present a successful evening and series of work to be presented on April 17-19, 2008.

B) We are part of a piece that requires that we play the part of curators while keeping in mind that our role is part of an art piece that is a self-generating curatorial process which was initially curated by AUNTS. Our role as part of a process-oriented work is to maintain the viewpoint that we are Part One (after the initial curatorial call by AUNTS) in a series of multiple pieces that co-exist to form one multi-media artwork/dialogue/time-based installation to be transmitted on April 17-19, 2008.

The question arises regarding whether, as self-selected curators, we should respect the request put out by AUNTS and carry out our duties according to the instructions. In this case, we must imagine that as a group we emerged naturally and in direct relation to the finished and projected event. This is an isolated experience. We must limit our historical experience and focus on historical knowledge. Past and future are to fold in on one another to create a present that projects a successful future. These are the boundaries of option A.

[I side with Option B.]
AUNTS is watching from above and stepping in to direct traffic and drivers’ concerns. TEAM ONE by AUNTS creates a crowded roadway on an elevated bridge above the water ballet that the drivers are instructed to create, coach, and critique. Every move in the three-tiered spectacle is under surveillance. This is a unique experience that is to be documented from above. The work of AUNTS is dance dialogue through movement. The medium of AUNTS is the breathing body (as a body of beings/life/animals or the body of the individual). We are the ants of AUNTS in the TEAM ONE scenario. We are building a farm for communication, dialogue, and weight-carrying based on the subject of curation and our relationship as a body of volunteers exchanging the information of a collaborative work. We are carrying our own weight, TEAM ONE’s weight, and the weight of the final live show. We are carrying the wait—the space between the outside and the office where news is delivered and emotions are exchanged. We are using the waiting room as a platform for performance. We’re doing it in the performance space. We’re doing the Waiting and Exchanging dance. We’re doing the WE dance. The devices in the weight room are in human form. We’re exercising here—for the public, for ourselves, and for our performers. AUNTS is carrying more than the weight of its own body through a self-generating art medium of movement—the dialogue of the living.

We are able to successfully carryout the instructions of part one of TEAM ONE while also understanding ourselves as art objects functioning as curators. For most or all of us, we must add to this conglomeration of roles and responsibilities the burden (or advantage) of the ARTIST-AS-CURATOR scenario. As ARTIST-AS-CURATOR I have bypassed the very thing that is governing my accessibility. Yet, as ARTIST-AS-CURATOR AS-ART-OBJECT, I am vulnerable to a system of the system of art.

As an artist, I am accustomed to creating rules and marking the floor with tape to tell my viewers how far they can come to the art and artmaking/performance. [I will tell you where to touch me. I will tell you how close you can come to that part. I will allow my art piece to be exposed to you. I will control your viewing of my private work(ings). I will control the snipping/cropping/stopping.] As an artist I am vulnerable to the decisions and whims of the art institution and curator. As an artist I am playing with power. As an artist I like to do it. As artists we are doing it now.

TEAM ONE is a statement about a statement. This is a statement sandwiched between the statement between the statement about the statement. TEAM ONE is a statement about curation and a statement about the artist. TEAM ONE is a statement about who/what is on the team and the constitution of the team.

The framing of the childhood role model sums it up best (text from 2002):?

MR. RODGERS AS PERVERT THROUGH HIS PICTURE-PICTURE:?
picture-picture = compartment-compartment?

This is the nesting of the outside into the inside—the inside swallowing the outside and becoming the inside. Mr. Rodgers serves as the voyeur of the Land of Make Believe—his Land of Make Believe in a land that already exists and functions without him…There is this taking through copying/following, rather than a cutting or removing; so, as long as the Land of Make Believe is conscious of its own functionality, its well-being is never sacrificed. ??What we have is a dilemma with compartmentalization when the private is brought into the public and back to the private through a select audience. It is the sieve of censorship—the monitoring screen of exposure. Mr. Rodgers seems to have defined it best in his memory square.

TEAM ONE consists of time-based media that produce a time-based process. As participants, we are the medium of TEAM ONE by AUNTS. There is an interdependency between the producer and the participants. There is an interdependency between the participants and the product. There is a facing of those who do not bear the same face; there is a facing of those who all have the same face. Differentiation becomes impossible; starting and stopping are indiscernible; outside and inside reverse and fold up upon one another.

The support system between these three Ps points to the process of art-making with an awareness of self, audience, and institution. TEAM ONE has become a statement on the teamwork of opposing teams wearing uniforms of uniform color. Which team members face the others? Which team members frame the others? What is the role of the coach in a fluid experience of teamwork, complete with the team mentality of locating opposition, consistency, the goal, and options for maneuvering.

We have been curated to curate about curation. This is the dialogue dance; the last section will moderate the translation. Three performances will capture our movement and spit it back out in a different direction—at a different circle formation. They are the future, and they are the snippet of the exchange of words in part one of TEAM ONE. As a team of recorded, but otherwise faceless, volunteer curators who have come forth in the critical, yet celebratory, manner of our roundtable [roundfloor] discussion, we are creating a history of the moment. We are building a family tree of curators, and in the end, our three selected performers/works will mark the curatorial team of one historical moment. A combination of these moments will silently exchange the weight of their experience and mark their places in the history of performance, if their volunteering bodies are accepted. They have been curated to curate about curation.

[I side with Option B.]

-Sarah H. Paulson